In addition to the prison sentence handed down by Clark County Common Pleas Court Judge Douglas Rastatter — Sanders will have to register as a Tier II sex offender every six months for the next 25 years.
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“I don’t think it’d make any difference if I say anything at all,” Sanders said before his punishment was given. “The way I see it is — it’s not gonna matter if I don’t get to see my daughter or not. It’s not going to matter if my life’s been ripped apart or not.”
Sanders was originally indicted on 61 counts, including of raping two young girls, but a jury found him not guilty of rape and gross sexual imposition charges.
Springfield Police launched their investigation into Sanders in early March when two young girls were interviewed and one girl told authorities that Sanders showed her a picture of child porn on his phone. According to court documents, the girl said Sanders told her that what was seen in the picture was normal and that other kids were doing it.
Sanders was interviewed by police in April and allowed investigators to search his phone, according to court documents.
An extraction on the phone revealed 10 videos that showed children younger than 10 engaging in sex acts and more than 350 pictures of similar content, according to law enforcement.
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During Sanders’ trial, he told the jury that he brought the phone secondhand off Amazon and that the pictures and videos law enforcement found must already have been downloaded before he purchased it — but jurors didn’t buy it.
At Wednesday’s sentencing, prosecutors asked the judge for a lengthy prison sentence.
“These videos were of children being raped in many cases — young children pre-pubescent children,” said Clark County Assistant Prosecutor Aaron Heskett. “After he downloaded those images — after he recreated them — he could’ve deleted them but he didn’t. He then kept them and stored them, giving him the ability to reproduce them again.”
After the sentence was handed down, Sanders’ attorney Jeffrey Hunter did ask the judge to appoint an attorney for a possible appeal of the case.
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